The other day I found that the University of Arizona has the only Espresso Book Machine in Arizona and I wanted to see it in action. So I went down to the Main Library at UofA and headed downstairs to their Express Document Center and asked to see it in action. I was not let down.
There was a book already being printed when I got there and was able to watch it getting finished up. I was pretty lucky to get there when I did because it only take 2 or 3 minutes to print a 100ish page book. The book printer (the guy not the machine) walked me through the machine section by section and showed me how it got to the finished product.
I was unable to get any pictures of the machine myself as to not be rude to the printer who took time away from work to give me a tour. Sorry.
Here are the product photo from their website:
It's basically two printers: the main Xerox on the left there that prints the interior pages of the book and feeds it to a holding area in the center clear compartment. There they are continuously "patted down" to keep them all in alignment. The pages are printed on letter sized pages (8 1/2 x 11) no matter the actual size of the finished book. The second printer on the right next to the monitor is a not color Epson printer that prints the covers for the book. The cover is feed directly to the clear compartment just below itself. When all the pages and the cover are printed the two are combined and glued together.
From there, the book gets flipped over and cut to size by a large blade at the bottom of the machine. The scraps are dropped into the metallic drawer you see in the photo. Once the process is complete the book is lifted and dropped down a chute on the back side of the machine.
I decided that I want to see a book printed and keep it. So I requested a book that I knew was in the public domain, War of the Worlds by H.G. Well. It turns out that all the pricing is set by OnDemandBooks, the creator of the Espresso Book Machine and they wanted 17 USD for it so I tried another title; Tarzan of the Apes, it was a more reasonable 10 USD so I went with that.
It took more time setting up the request to their servers and downloading the title than it took to print the book. Here is the finished product:
Promo video of it in action:
